University of Toronto

Emissions control is an important part of any environmental policy. However, in dense urban environments and other locations, it is important to deal with sound as well. To ensure effective pollutant mitigation while also ensuring minimal acoustic disturbance, it is necessary to look at computer models that look at these factors simultaneously. This work will provide SPI with tools necessary for acoustic models while ensuring that their current products meet environmental requirements.

The objective of this research is twofold: to improve existing risk management framework to assess interest rate shocks, and to develop a new risk factor model to create an equity risk score system to help guide investment decisions.
The first part of this research project involves the development of an equity risk score system to better evaluate the quality of an investment.

Helicopter training simulators are an important part of improving the safety of both civil and military helicopter operations. The most important part of helicopter training simulators is the model of the helicopter dynamics since it drives all the other simulator subsystems. This project aims to provide CAE with a more automated and accurate method for determining the parameters within their blade element helicopter model such that it matches the real helicopter behaviour.

Geomechanica Inc. develops simulation software (Irazu) for rock engineering applications. This numerical software has been used in several peer-reviewed research publications in the rock mechanics field. A key challenge in the numerical modelling of rock masses is the selection of appropriate input parameters. The objective of this work is to develop a solution to streamline the laboratory testing and integration of the results into Irazu models. As a result, the time needed to build a model will be significantly reduced and the uncertainties in the model inputs will be mitigated.

Modelling the movement of water through a hydropower station is an important tool for understanding this very complex behaviour, where water is pushed and pulled through long tunnels and spinning turbines, resulting in a vast range of pressures and speeds. There are generally two types of models: 1-dimensional (1D) models, which are simple and cost-effective, but do not provide adequate detail for the more complex features in the power station. The second type is 3-dimensional (3D) models, which are very detailed but cost both time and money.

The continuously increasing demand for wireless access, driven by the increasing requirements of our connected society, is pushing current wireless cellular communication systems to the limits of their capacity. The objective of this project is to continue the successful collaboration with our industry partner (Telus Corporation) to further contribute to the evolution of current generation wireless cellular communication systems (4G LTE) along with the development of next generation wireless cellular communication systems (5G) to meet current and future requirements of our connected society.

The NSERC Strategic Network for Smart Applications on Virtual Infrastructures is a five-year partnership between Canadian industry, universities, researchers, research and education (R&E) networks, and high performance computing centres to investigate the design of future application platforms that will deliver software applications of greater capability and intelligence.

Programming of long-term digital memory storage devices is currently not an optimised process. This is due to the fact that the exact physical mechanisms that allow for a data bit to be reliably stored and read are not well understood. As a result, in order to produce high quality, long-lasting, reliable memory cells, the manufacturer must perform extensive testing and
iterative modifications on each generation of products. Our project aims to develop a software model that simulates the physics and chemistry of memory device structures on an atomic level.

Membrane proteins such as ion channels, transporters or G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are excellent but difficult drug targets involved in a large number of life-threatening diseases and conditions. These proteins, over-expressed and essential for disease onset and progression, are naturally targeted by toxins from venomous organisms. During evolution, these toxins have been optimized to efficiently target physiologically-relevant proteins involved in ion channel opening or closure, thus incapacitating the prey or defending against predators.

Hypoxic cells comprise most aggressive and therapy resistant population in the tumors therefore targeting proteins that are essential for hypoxia survival is an effective novel anti-cancer treatment. We have an ability to generate highly specific humanized synthetic antibodies against target of choice. We will generate antibodies against proteins that promote hypoxia survival, test their effect in 2D/3D systems and will move to preclinical/clinical trials upon successful in vitro validation.